


After The Storm

by imalwaysstraight



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Crushes, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Marauders, Marauders' Era, Songfic, wolfstar
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-19
Updated: 2015-03-22
Packaged: 2018-03-13 17:05:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3389525
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imalwaysstraight/pseuds/imalwaysstraight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus and Sirius find themselves as alone as possible on the back lawns of Hogwarts on a sun-less but peaceful Sunday afternoon. Cue small talk, singing, daisy chains, and butterflies (the stomach kind). // October 31, 1981. A lot less talking, far less peace.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. FIRST

**Author's Note:**

> A two-shot comprised of a first and a last. The first part is fluff, fluff, and more fluff, and the second part is (hopefully) kind of painful. It’s inspired by (and contains) lyrics from ‘After the Storm’ by Mumford & Sons (obviously copyright Mumford & Sons), which you should go listen to because it's both a lovely song and so terribly angsty in this context. This is the first Wolfstar fic I’ve actually managed to finish, so please let me know what you think!  
> 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings for mild homophobia and brief mention of rough sex.

“I love this weather.” Sirius opened his eyes to look up at the sky, which loomed heavy over the back lawns of the castle. It was marbled over with slate grey clouds, mottled and convivial. Well, convivial to Remus. To Sirius, it looked dead.

“Why? It’s about to rain,” the dark-haired boy countered from his position on the ground, his head on his mate’s legs. He wasn’t entirely sure how they had gotten like this- maybe back when he had still been in possession of intent to read his charms book, he’d laid down, and things just happened- but he wasn’t complaining. Lupin’s thighs weren’t entirely uncomfortable (but he’d never in his wildest dreams tell him that).

Remus shook his head, resting back on his forearms in the grass. “That’s what’s good about it. I love the rain, and the weather leading up to it. It’s so…” He craned his neck up to the clouds once more as he searched for the right word. “Alive.”

“This is your idea of alive?” Sirius clucked. “Remind me to never let you become a morgue director.”

The chestnut-haired boy cracked a thin smile. “Oh, there go all my hopes and aspirations.”

“I don’t know what you get out of this,” Sirius continued, squinting up at the spread of clouds and shaking his head slightly. “I prefer the sky after the storm, when it’s just clearing out.”

“That’s a song,” Remus said.

“What?”

“‘After the Storm’. It’s a song my m- it’s a song.”

Sirius raised his eyebrows up at the werewolf. “It’s a song your what?”

Lupin sighed, rolling his eyes. “It’s a song my mum used to sing. To me. When I was sad. As a kid.” He braced himself internally for a snide remark, maybe ‘poor little Remus' or ‘did the baby feel mopey?’ or, better yet still, ‘ickle wolfie’. General response to just the thought of tiny Marauders invariably ended in one party red-faced and telling the others that they could fuck off. It was mutual, though, so what could you do?

Instead, the boy in Remus's lap just closed his eyes again. “How’s it go?” the grey-eyed wizard asked.

“It’s a full song,” he replied. “Like, a long song.”

“Sing the chorus?”

Remus scoffed. “Sirius, I can’t sing alone in the shower, much less- well-” he paused, gesturing emphatically to the students scattered across the greens before realizing that Sirius's eyes were closed. “Much less out here.”

“Bollocks,” the fifth year mumbled. “I’ve heard you from our room.” The taller boy looked daggers down at him. “Don’t give me that glare, you _do_ sing.”

“What- have- your eyes are closed,” Remus spluttered. “You can’t even see me. I’m not giving you any glares!” Sirius opened his eyes and quirked an eyebrow. “ _What_?” Remus pressed.

“Nothing.” The tan boy exhaled deeply, shaking his head. “You’re funny sometimes, Moony, you know that?” The werewolf didn’t reply.

The clouds overhead swirled into themselves as a sharp gust of air blew across the lawns, ruffling the grass and blowing robes every which way. Through the wind, Sirius could hear brief snippets of the usual din of the back of the castle: third years playing catch (probably with a Muggle ball, judging by the sound of it) and shouting at each other, laughter from some gaggle of girls not too far away, incoherent shrieking in the distance. Emptier than normal, he noted, likely due to the weather. It wasn’t too bad of a place to pass a lazy Sunday afternoon. Especially not from his spot. Best seat in the house, he would wager.

The two of them hadn’t really intended to be alone. It was just that Peter had an irresponsibly overdue divination essay to finish, and James had finally gotten up a civil conversation in the common room with that bird he’d been pining after for ages, and they were the only two left. (Not to mention that they couldn’t have lured Prongs away from the ginger girl with all the pumpkin pasties in the world.) Remus had stretched up off the loveseat next to the hearth and cracked his back, groaning about desperately needing some fresh air.

And Sirius- well, what was he supposed to do? It was _Moony_. A long walk alone with Moony. With Moony, and his dorky jumpers, and his illegally green eyes, and his idiot know-it-all smirks, and his jawline- oh, bloody hell, his jawline. _This is not how you’re supposed to think about him, dammit Padfoot. Damn you._ A long walk with Moony, alone but for Sirius's charms textbook that the nerd had insisted he bring along because no way was Remus Lupin going to be held responsible for impeding the education of someone who, in his words, ‘very much needed it’. After a number of physical threats made in the werewolf’s general direction, Sirius had lugged himself off the couch and onto his feet, and that was how they had ended up on the lawns.

“It’s supposed to have a guitar in back,” Remus mused, dragging Sirius back to the present.

“Hmm?”

“There’s supposed to be a guitar in the back of the song,” he continued, “but neither of my parents play, so I’ve never heard it.” He paused. “You still want me to sing the chorus?” Sirius nodded.

 

_And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears._

_And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears._

_Get over your hill and see what you find there,_

_With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair._

“That’s beautiful,” Sirius ventured after he finished. Remus blushed in spite of himself, rubbing the back of his neck. “You know,” the animagus continued in speculation, “I bet I could weave flowers in my hair if I tried.”

“That’s- well, you do have the locks for it,” Lupin admitted. “Although you might be better off with a flower crown.”

“A flower crown?”

“You know, out of a daisy chain? Here,” he said, leaning over to pluck a little white flower out of the grass on his left. “It’s easy.”

“Remus Lupin, daisy chain maker?” Sirius scoffed. “Well, I never.”

“Shut up,” Remus grumbled, cutting a slit in the stem of the flower with his thumbnail. “Not everyone was as stunningly popular and charismatic in second year primary as you.” He picked another flower, purple this time, and threaded it through the hole in the first.

And here was the taunt he had been expecting. “Poor little wolfboy, having to settle with flowers for company.”

“Well,” Remus snorted, working away. “I wasn’t exactly wolfboy back then. At least not until the next summer.”

“Oh.” Sirius gulped. _Damn you,_ he thought to himself, _can’t ever have a solid conversation without fucking things up._ “I’m sorry.”

“‘S alright.” Remus furrowed his brow at a particularly stubborn daisy. It just didn’t want to go through. “Long time ago. It happens.”

“Still, it- you- you poor thing.” Sirius shuddered at the thought. “You poor, tiny thing.”

“Sirius Black, don’t you dare deign to pity me. If you do so, I fear I shall lose all faith in the natural order of things.” Before the slate-eyed boy could riposte, Remus laid something across his forehead. “Damn it, it’s just short.”

“Feels funny,” Sirius remarked.

“One sec.” Remus plucked another flower and fiddled around with the chain, biting his lip. “One more.” He added one last flower and tied the delicate ends together. “Sit up.”

“Don’t you tell me what to do,” Sirius retorted as he complied. “Here, do you want my hair out of the bun, or--”

“Doesn’t matter,” Remus said, dusting off his elbows. “Wait, if you- I can’t get it on from here. Can you move over?” Sirius scooted towards the boy. “A little more.”

Black raised his eyebrows and paused. “I’d be sitting in your _lap_.”

“Wherever you sit, I’ll still be putting bloody daisies in your hair,” Remus pointed out. Sirius groaned and threw a leg over the Gryffindor’s legs, settling in on his lap. Delicately, the taller boy placed the crown on his head, situating the daisies in among wavy ebony hair. Pushing back a loose strand, he tucked it in behind Sirius’s ear gently.

Sirius dragged his eyes up away from Remus's collarbone to try and meet that piercing green stare, to try and hold his gaze. He couldn’t do it for long. Dear Merlin, it was too much. His eyes flickered down from eyes to lips again and again. To rosy pink lips, to slightly chapped lips, to lips being licked, lips so close that he would never in a million years get to have pressed to his neck. He’d thought about it so many times, though, so many late nights spent in restless, drowsy fantasy about what it would be like to be held by _him_.

Those feverish daydreams always ended in the same agonizing sinking feeling. Sirius couldn’t be thinking about Moony like that. He just couldn’t. He just couldn’t, and yet he still could, no matter how hard he wished he wouldn’t. It was so painful, and so dirty, not to mention that Moony would never want to hold him like that. Remus would never be so perverted and twisted and utterly disgusting as him, never look look at blokes like he did, never think about being _held down_ like he did. Remus wasn’t fucked up. Sirius was the fuck-up.That much was clear. Sirius was the one things were wrong with.

So awfully wrong, and yet now, staring down at Remus’s lips (having given up any hope of looking him in the eye) so bloody right. They were lips so mesmerizing that it took Sirius a good 30 seconds to realize that the other boy’s fingertips hadn’t moved from his neck behind his ear. He breathed in sharply. Remus gulped. “I’m so sorry for this,” he muttered under his breath.

And then Remus was kissing him hard, pressing those impossibly perfect lips into his, one hand wrapping tighter around his neck as the other snaked its way up to rest on his waist. Sirius couldn’t move. It had to be a nightmare, it really did. The cruelest sort of nightmare, the type where you woke up safe but alone and aching for something you’d never have. But here they were, in the grass, Sirius pretty much straddling Remus stiffly as the fair-haired boy surged into him. Remus pulled back.

“Shit, I’m so--” The werewolf got cut off.

“Holy fuck,” Sirius breathed.

“I’m so sorry, Padfoot. I’m so, so sorry,” Remus spit out, leaning back on one hand in the grass and covering his mouth with the other. “Shit.”

“No, I…” The grey-eyed boy trailed off. “Fuck. Fucking hell.” Remus’s eyes widened at him in terror.

“Are you okay?”

“I- can you-” Sirius stumbled over his words, heart pounding out of his chest. “Fuck. Again.”

“ _What_?”

Sirius’s tan cheeks flushed crimson, and he tried to pull back together his last shreds of consciousness. “Kiss me again, you dimwit. So much for ‘practically a Ravenclaw’, Christ.”

Remus smirked at him, shaking his head. “And who said I would take orders from you?” Sirius rolled his eyes at the reuse of his own words. Remus reached up and carefully readjusted the chain of daisies, which had gotten a bit lopsided, and sat back on his hands, letting out a low whistle. “You are so damn gorgeous with flowers in your hair.” The raven-haired wizard had a retort ready to go (‘ _Excuse you, I’m damn gorgeous all of the time_ ’), but it was stolen off the tip of his tongue by Lupin’s mouth.

Sirius could hear once more the faint sounds of students shouting at one another across the greens as he leaned into the kiss heavily, but he couldn’t be bothered to check if anyone was watching. He couldn’t be bothered to care right now, to care about anything other than Remus and Remus and _Remus_ , Remus right here in his arms, Remus right here curling fingers in his hair, Remus right here _wanting him_. It was just the two of them under the haze of clouds, the grass brushing against them thanks to the gentle wind, and the rest of the world, whether it cared or not, could sod right off. Oh, dear God, this was what happy felt like. Moments like this made the rest worth it. Sure, storm clouds may have been brewing overhead, but Sirius was sure he was ready for any rain they could bring.


	2. LAST

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Strong trigger warnings for parental/partner abuse and suicidal/self-loathing tendencies.

“I’m fucking drenched,” Sirius called out as he slammed the front door of the flat shut. “Fucking soaked. It’s pouring out there. Gonna have to change out of _everything_ ,” he continued, tugging off a Muggle raincoat. “All ‘cause the bloody sky wouldn’t stop beating down on me.” He shook the coat off, water droplets flinging themselves all over the hallway with abandon. Sirius hung the (now substantially drier) jacket up on one of the hooks they’d put up last year in the hallway, after Remus had finally had it with picking coats and cloaks up off the tile and carrying them to the closet, only to find them on the floor again the next day. “Saw nothing, as per usual, but you would not believe how long I had to spend out there.” He kicked off one rainboot, a second rainboot, and began unbuttoning his shirt, which the rain had plastered to his skin in spite of the coat. “Shacklebolt was late, too, so that was an extra ten minutes, and I forgot to eat lunch, so the entire day I’ve just…” The animagus paused, slipping the last button out of its hole slowly. Something was off. “Remus?”

A gentle creaking came from the living room, and Sirius nearly jumped out of his skin. “Remus!” Falling over himself, he rushed into the next room, heart pounding. “Remus!” He threw himself through the doorway just as an exhausted sigh came from the couch inside. Sirius let out his breath, leaning back against the doorframe. “Christ, Remus, I thought you’d been-” He fumbled for words. “I thought something was wrong.”

“I want to die,” the blond replied from the sofa.

Sirius slipped his shirt off carefully and dropped it on the ground, climbing slowly onto the couch alongside his facedown lover. Easing himself down, he laid an arm over the boy. No, not boy: he was a man now. Sirius found it hard to bring himself to think the word, but it was true. Remus was a man, a grown man, a rough-around-the-edges man with responsibilities and hardships to fill his days twice over. They had called themselves men before, back when Remus grew the first hairs reminiscent of a beard between the four of them. James had decreed that, since they were all Marauders, the manliness was shared. (Moony had then leapt to his feet and ran down the hall before locking himself in the bathroom for two hours. After asking around, Peter found that Remus had gone to borrow a razor from one of the sixth-years who he talked about books with. Sirius never did find out exactly what had happened in the bathroom. He never asked.)

So back then they were boys pretending to be men, cavorting around the castle and getting fake-drunk on 3 sips of Firewhiskey in the Astronomy Tower and lugging books galore across campus and sneaking glances in the shower and blushing crimson in the shower and eventually doing _other_ things _together_ in the shower (and getting three weeks’ detention from McGonagall after the next room over complained of hearing them doing said other things together in the shower). They were just boys. None of them had any idea what it was to be a man, except for Moony. Remus had been a man even back then, at least in seventh year, and maybe some part of him always had been. No, it wasn’t the beard-esque shadow that did it, despite James’s insistence. It wasn’t his propensity for actually doing the assigned work on time. It was simply his exhaustion. Remus had never not been tired. And that’s what men are, aren’t they? Tired. Moony had never gotten the chance to feel awake, to feel electric, to feel on fire.

Sirius settled in next to the man on the couch and tried not to think about it like that.

 _Don’t say that_ , he thought, _don’t ask to die_ , but he wouldn’t console Remus like that out loud. It rarely made it better. He leaned further into his shoulder, letting the remaining raindrops clinging to his skin soak into the scratchy cushions. “Worse day than mine, huh?”

“Sirius,” Remus said slowly, “I want to fucking die.”

Sirius gave in. “Rem, don’t--”

“I am so fucking done,” the werewolf continued, pushing himself up onto his elbows clumsily. One leg slid onto the floor: it wasn’t a terribly big sofa. “So fucking done with don’t, so fucking done with keep going, so fucking done with all of it, Sirius, you have to understand.”

He did. At least he thought he did. At least he thought he had something vaguely evocative of understanding by now. At first he had thought it was just another part of the moon, a phase, a waning, so to speak: a once-a-month dip that they just had to trudge through together. He was wrong.

“I do,” he reassured.

The lycanthrope flicked green eyes up to meet his, and held him there for a long moment. Distrust? Fear? No, there was something else in there. Sirius couldn’t tell what. “No, you don’t, you bastard.”

The grey-eyed wizard sighed. “Come here,” he replied, stretching his arms out. Awkward as ever, Remus clambered back up onto the sofa and buried his face in Sirius’s shoulder. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.”

They had only said ‘I love you’ once in the last three months, when Sirius had finally made the coffee right for what would become the first and only time. Other than that, it had come in other gestures: a touch to the shoulder, a kiss on the forehead, and, most often, those words. “It’s going to be okay, I promise.” Both of them uttered it at every passing chance, and it had become a background hum. Sirius wasn’t sure he believed it anymore. Remus didn’t, he could tell: in the last week he had begun responding with “stop lying”, which Sirius found to be impossibly more teenager-ish than Lupin had been at 17, but what could you do?

Remus cried. Remus cried hard. It started off in light whimpers at first but then, then he couldn’t control it, then he lost the reins. Sirius clutched him tight as he began to crumble. All at once, he collapsed inward, folding onto himself and sobbing into his lover’s shirt, muscles clenched hard. He choked on how much he wanted oblivion, coughed hard. So it had come to this. Just wanting to give up and be the wolf forever, anything but this kind of torment. He was already destroying himself and the people he loved- why not do it with fur on his back? This was it, this was it, this was it, this was how he went, this was how it ended, pathetic and helpless and angry as hell.

“Shh, it’s going-”

“NO!” Remus screamed, writhing. Sirius relented, relaxing his grip and letting the werewolf thrash into him. “No, just-” _Just let me cry_. “I can’t do this,” he said, whimpering. “I can’t.”

And so Sirius let him cry, and he cried and heaved for a few minutes more, until it had dimmed down into a near-silent, limping wheeze. The raven-haired wizard sighed, and his lover sighed back shakily, pulling much-needed air back into his lungs. Sirius debated it in his head, and decided, well, why the hell not? “And I won’t die al-”

“Oh, no,” Remus groaned.

“Shh,” the animagus hushed him. “Just let me. Please.” Remus was silent.

 

_And I won't die alone and be left there._

_Well, I guess I'll just go home,_

_Oh, God knows where._

_Because death is just so full and man so small._

_Well, I'm scared of what's behind and what's before._

He paused for a reaction from his boyfriend, who simply sniffled a bit more, so he continued to the chorus.

 

_And there will come a time, you'll see, with no more tears._

_And love will not break your heart, but dismiss your fears._

_Get over your hill and see what you find there,_

_With grace in your heart and flowers in your hair._

 

“First kiss,” Remus mumbled slowly, his voice tentative and his memory unsteady.

Sirius pushed a couple of strands of hair off of damp cheeks. “Mhm.”

“You were hot as fuck.”

Sirius laughed coarsely. “Well, of course.”

“Even with the goddamn flowers.” Remus pushed himself up onto his hands, swinging his legs off the sofa.

“Where are you going?” Sirius asked.

“Have to be at Molly’s in 10 minutes via Muggle transport,” the werewolf grumbled, wiping his nose with the back of his hand. “I should get a move on.”

“No, Remus, don’t-” Sirius grabbed for words. “You’re not feeling well, you don’t have to go.”

Remus scoffed, grabbing a sweater off a nearby chair and wriggling into it. “It’ll hardly do me any better to sit around here moping all day. I’ll feel awful either way, so I may as well go feel awful while doing something productive.” He pulled the bottom of the sweater down, then looked around for his wallet.

“Not in the storm,” Sirius nagged as his boyfriend searched. “Don’t go out in that weather.”

He plucked the wallet off the floor by the couch. “I’ll be fine-”

“You’re not fine _inside_ the bloody house!” Sirius yelled, pushing himself to his feet. Remus went quiet. “You’re not even fine with a roof over your head- God knows what you’ll be like in the rain, just stay the fuck home!”

There was a long quiet moment in the room. The walls held their breath, the wires in the television ceased their near-incessant crackling to one another, the sole framed photo- of graduation- stopped its silent chattering and cheering to watch.

Remus broke the solemnity first. “You’re too kind to me, you know that?” Sirius shook his head frustratedly. No, no he was not, no he was very much not. He didn’t have enough kindness in his blood to give Remus the sort of compassion he deserved. That unsettling look was still there in the man’s eyes, the unnameable one, and Sirius didn’t know what to do about it. He reached up, wrapping his hand around the back of Lupin’s neck, and pulled him in to kiss him.

This was what he would miss, Remus decided, when it was all said and done. If you could miss anything post-mortem, this would be it. He wouldn’t be able to kiss Sirius forever, and maybe that made him sadder than anything, but maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t even enjoy his boyfriend’s lips while he was here and in his arms. Yes, that was it. _Stop fucking thinking, dimwit_ , he thought to himself, _and kiss the fucking boy_. Because this, he didn’t want to miss. This was fucking golden.

Remus broke the kiss somewhat unwittingly, ducking Sirius’s gaze afterwards. “I’ll see you tonight,” he mumbled, stumbling back out of the room.

“I- what the _hell_ , Lupin? What the fucking hell?”

Apologies crept up at the back of his throat, and Remus did his best to ensnare them. “I need to go.”

“No, you bloody don’t,” Sirius argued back, following Remus into the entryway. “You don’t have to--”

“Stop telling me what to do!” Remus roared, spinning on him.

Sirius stood his ground. “You sound like the fucking wolf!” he snapped back quickly.

Remus tried to stop himself, he really did, but consciousness only kicked in when he heard the sharp _crack_ of skin on skin. And there was Sirius, stumbling backward, clutching his face and gasping for air. He had done it. He had _hurt_ Sirius. The words _domestic battery_ flew into his mind and were promptly evicted. He had hurt him, and it felt good. He hadn’t even been the wolf. He had been human, and he had hurt him, and the burning on his hand echoed through the scars scattered across his body and he had hurt him and he had hurt him and he had hurt him. This was all he was, really, at the core, just another naive thing wrapped in layers and layers of violence and doomed to hurt people. That was all he did. That was all he was ever meant to do. Bring other people pain, he couldn’t even-- for the love of god. The one man he could love in any form and, just for a moment, he had wanted to shred him to pieces and burn the ashes. He hadn’t even been the wolf.

Holy fuck.

“I’m so-” Remus blurted. _Sorry_. He couldn’t force out that last word. Too much work. He was bereft of apologies. He turned away from the silence and walked out, slamming the door shut behind him.

Sirius wanted to dissolve.

* * *

 

The slight boy cowered behind the armoire, gulping as he heard the door to the parlor slam closed. He knew how this worked by now: if he sniffled too loud, his mother gave him another two slaps on top of the five he’d already got; if he was caught openly crying, it meant another three. He pressed himself flat against the wood and sucked air in, trying to ignore the fire still stinging his cheek. He could do this. He could do this. A tiny Regulus, wide-eyed and toddling, rounded the corner sleepily. “Y’okay?” he slurred. Sirius didn’t answer, just blinked back tears and pressed himself flatter. He pushed his head back against the carved cabinet. If he tried hard enough, he could just disappear into the woodwork.

* * *

 

The rain ceased its pounding on the roof of the flat around the time Sirius forced himself to leave the couch. He had people to check on, places to be. A cold October night wouldn’t wait for anyone.

He never saw the flat again. Remus never saw it the same, either: not from the couch that next day with the newspaper crumpled up in his hand, not on the day after, when Molly helped him pack his things up and did an awful job of trying to cheer him, not when he locked it for the last time and slid the key through the mailslot for the landlady. All he could see echoing back at him when he closed his eyes was Sirius in the hallway: a red-faced shadow of a cowering man who, by all accounts, should have been in tears. 


End file.
